alt Hacker NewsI think we put too much negative emphasis on people who aren’t as gifted intellectually.
In reality, the world works because of human automotons, honest people doing honest work; living their life in hopefully a comforting, complete and wholesome way, quietly contributing their piece to society.
There is no shame in this, yet we act as though there is.
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Doing a repetitive(ish) task day in day out requires a specific type of person, I'm not one of them.
But I do know multiple, just in my immediate familuy. People who graduated from school, went to the local factory and worked there for half a century before retiring. Pretty much the same job, moving widgets from A to B etc, nothing massively complex. I do respect the people who can do it and especially the ones who make it look effortless and efficient - even a bit performative.
Also because my home town is a "factory town", guess where I worked for my summer job(s). I wanted to shove a hot poker in my ear just to get away from the tedium after the first day. On the second day I was thinking how to automate the damn process to not involve me in it at all :D
I'm not blaming you here, but I think "automatons" may be inaccurate. A lot of the jobs that seem menial would be utterly bollixed if done by an automaton. The people continually handle the edge cases and tiny discrepancies between formal procedures and how things actually work. Consider the many stories of people experience AI bots when they try to get vendor support for products. "Please let me talk to a real person."
Many of those people, probably including most bureaucrats, are working on systems that have already been automated to the fullest extent possible. This is one of the reasons why bureaucracies seem chaotic and inefficient -- the stuff that works is happening automatically and is invisible. You only see the exceptions.
The automation can be improved, but it's a laborious process and fraught with the risks associated with the software crisis. You never know when a project is going to fall into the abyss and never emerge, and the best models of project failure are stochastic.
I love a dog and a cat and tree. I can respect someone not as intelligent as other folks. I'd love it we started holding the crude, mean and willfully ignorant to a higher standard.
The movie Perfect Days captures this perfectly.
Human automatons? Why would you have mercy for automatons? Just call them cattle, we might feel more compassion towards them if we don't think of them as machinelike.
This is what pains me with how many people respond negatively toward the idea of everyone being able to earn an honest living and raise a family. Too often the idea of "deserving it" comes into it as if doing your small part to contribute to society is not enough.